All Posts Tagged With: "Canada Foundation for Innovation"
New university presidents at Toronto and McGill
Why Meric Gertler and Suzanne Fortier matter
Gertler, the new U of T president (Brian Summers)
From the Inkless Wells blog on Macleans.ca
Between them, the University of Toronto and McGill University have 100,000 students, $596 million in total accumulated funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, one Charles Taylor and a perhaps disproportionate amount of the spotlight on higher education in Canada’s two largest provinces. They also have two new presidents: Meric Gertler at UofT and Suzanne Fortier at McGill. Together the two changes are probably more significant than most federal cabinet shuffles.
(This blog post will be lousy with Laurentian Consensus nostalgia; sorry. Perhaps only for today though, the less said about the University of Calgary, the better.)
In hiring close to home, both universities can be taken to be demonstrating either quiet confidence in the maturity of Canadian academe, or a chastened realization that in a time of limited resources, even the biggest schools are wise to stick to their knitting. Both schools instituted global searches and wound up bypassing candidates from afar in favour of local produce. Gertler was Toronto’s dean of Arts and Science. Fortier is president of the National Science and Engineering Research Council — indeed her start as principal of McGill will be delayed so she can cool off from that job for six months before taking a position with a major NSERC grant recipient — but her BSc and PhD were from McGill. 
Continue reading New university presidents at Toronto and McGill
B.C. radio telescope will act like time machine
Research could help solve mystery of universe’s origin
Hubble Space Telescope photo of planetary nebula (NGC 5189 NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI))
Construction has begun on a new radio telescope in British Columbia’s south Okanagan that will act like a type of time machine and help astrophysicists travel back to better understand the composition of our expanding universe.
The $11-million project is being built at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory southwest of Penticton, B.C., and will use components from the cellphone industry to capture and turn radio waves emitted six to 11 billion years ago into a three-dimensional map.
It’s the first research telescope built in Canada in more than three decades and includes scientists from the observatory, the University of British Columbia, McGill University and the University of Toronto.
“It’s almost like time travel,” said Kris Sigurdson, an astrophysicist from UBC and co-investigator on the project. “It’s looking back into the past and how the universe was at that time and it’s just amazing.”
Continue reading B.C. radio telescope will act like time machine
Ottawa announces $7.9m for research at four Atlantic universities
Dalhousie University set to get $5.2 million for five renewed research chairs
Four universities in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador are getting $7.9 million from Ottawa to fund eight research chairs.
The money is part of a $5.1-billion spending package for science and technology announced in the federal budget.
Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear says $1.4 million will go toward one new chair at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
Professor Kevin Kelloway is studying effective workplace leadership and what can be done to predict and prevent workplace violence and aggression.
Meanwhile, Dalhousie University will get $5.2 million for five renewed research chairs, Acadia $500,000 for one new chair and Memorial University will get $500,000 for one new chair.
Goodyear says two chairs will also get more than $321,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
- The Canadian Press
